Oracle Linux and Virtualization: The Man Behind the Strategy
Can Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) ever leapfrog Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) and VMware (NYSE: VMW) in the Linux and virtualization markets? Hmmm… before The VAR Guy takes a stab at answering those questions, he needs to track down Wim Coekaerts, senior VP of Oracle’s Linux and virtualization initiatives. Here’s why.
Coekaerts’ 17-year track record at Oracle suggests the technology giant is very serious about the Linux and virtualization markets. But how serious? With a little luck, The VAR Guy will track down Coekaerts during a trip to California next week.
Oracle recently released Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 for Oracle Linux. Oracle claims the performance enhancements allowed the company to achieve record database benchmark results. Plus, Oracle Linux is compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle asserts.
Meanwhile, Oracle claims its virtualization technology — Oracle VM 3.0 — offers four times the scalability of VMware “at a fraction of the cost.”
Despite those updates and claims, Red Hat and VMware both continue to chug along, each delivering double-digit revenue growth. Red Hat recently became the world’s first $1 billion software company focused purely on open source. And VMware recently reaffirmed its growth goals, despite a CFO transition at the company.
Can Oracle gain ground on Red Hat and VMware? Again, the answer likely involves Coekaerts. A 17-year Oracle veteran, Coekaerts is active in the Linux kernel community. And his responsibilities include such areas as Oracle VDI, Oracle Enterprise Linux/Unbreakable Linux, Oracle VM server for x86 and Oracle VM server for SPARC.
With a little luck, The VAR Guy hopes to grab some time with Coekaerts in the next few days. Plus, our resident blogger suspects he’ll connect with Oracle’s channel team, gaining updates on the overall Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized partner program.
Stay tuned.
Winning Red Hat ?
Likely done: Oracle VirtualBox has many millions of users. KVM (and RHEV) do not have that many.
Not so sure about Oracle’s commercial offering, but the free offering is doing well.
Oracle’s name in the open source community is mud at the moment. It is only natural to assume that Mr Coekaerts had something to do with this ongoing fiasco.
[email protected]: The VAR Guy will be at Oracle on April 17 and will check around…
[email protected]: The VAR Guy expects to gather some perspectives from Coekaerts in the next 2 days or so. Stay tuned.
-TVG
Sorry I missed this as I was away from my computer for the last 4 days. You know I am skeptical of Oracle’s growth prospects in general. With the Engineered Systems stuff being the most skeptical part.
After reading your article about their Linux and virtualization topics, I was struck by this quote from their CEO at the Google trial:
“If people could copy our software and create cheap knockoffs of our products, we wouldn’t get paid for our engineering and wouldn’t be able to invest what we invest,” Ellison testified.
In this article:
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_20415259/google-oracle-trial-larry-ellison-copyright-patent
and yet Oracle saying for 5+ years that they are Red Hat compatible and 100% the same.
While I know Red Hat is an open source company, and Oracle is not, it just struck me as an interesting perspective to view Oracle’s moves in Linux through. I think Oracle must hate having to say they are Red Hat compatible, ego-wise anyway…
Bill,
The VAR Guy just wrapped up his meetings at Oracle. Our resident blogger will share some more Oracle Linux and Oracle VM info shortly. But it sounds like Oracle doesn’t mind saying they are Red Hat compatible as long as customers/partners also realize the value-add that Oracle says it delivers with the Unbreakable Linux kernel enhancements.
More thoughts soon. Thanks for the continued readership. Healthy debate always welcome here.
-TVG